Courtesy of Judith Gregg Librarian Catherine Arbogast heads out with a personalized book delivery from the Los Altos main library.

Love of learning and curiosity about the world sometimes grow only more urgent as a person spends more and more time at home, limited by age, health condition, or both. Librarians head out from the Los Altos main l...

Already known as an innovator in the tech field, Google Inc. is now moving in on the art world.

The Mountain View-based company July 11 launched the “Paint the Town” contest, a “moving art experiment” that invites California residents over the age of 13 to submit physical or digital artwork that would decorate the door...

Traci Newell/Town Crier The six-week, tuition-free Stretch to Kindergarten program, hosted at Bullis Charter School, serves children who have not attended preschool. A teacher leads children in singing about the parts of a butterfly, above.

courtesy of Rishi Bommannan Rishi Bommannan cycled from Bates College in Maine to his home in Los Altos Hills, taking several selfies along the way. He also raised nearly $13,000 for the Livestrong Foundation, which supports cancer patients.

The Town Crier’s recent article on coyotes venturing down from the foothills in search of sustenance referenced the organization Project Coyote (“Recent coyote attacks keep residents on edge,” July 1). Do not waste your time contac...

Photos by Alicia Castro/Town Crier Local residents participate in an exercise class at the Grant Park Senior Center, above. Betsy Reeves, below left with Gail Enenstein, lobbied for senior programming in south Los Altos.

Grace Wilson Franks, our beloved mother and grandmother, left us peacefully on July 16, 2015 just a few weeks short of her 92nd birthday. She was born to Ross and Florence (Cruzan) Wilson in rural Tulare, California on Septem...

Most of us have a place inside our hearts and minds that occasionally causes us trouble. For some, it is sadness, depression or despair. For others, it may be fear, anger, resentment or myriad other emotional “dark places” that at times seem to hij...

Soprano Stacey Stofferahn sings the title role in West Bay Opera’s production of “Tosca,” slated to open next weekend in Palo Alto.

West Bay Opera’s production of “Tosca” is scheduled Oct. 11-20 at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto, with a preview set for Thursday.

A new production of Giacomo Puccini’s classic tale of passion, oppression and death, the opera premiered in 1900. It is based on a work by French playwright Victorien Sardou.

“The Tosca story is about what perfectly reasonable people will do when pushed to extremes by the circumstances,” said Jose Luis Moscovich, West Bay Opera’s general director and conductor. “It makes for great theater and even better opera. Puccini was a genius at making the stage sizzle with passion, whether it was love, lust, murder or, in this case, all of the above.”

Philip Skinner – who portrayed Iago in last season’s “Otello”– returns to West Bay Opera as Scarpia, Rome’s unscrupulous chief of police. Soprano Stacey Stofferahn performs the title role. The cast includes David Gustafson (as Mario Cavaradossi), Nadav Hart (Spoletta), William O’Neill (Angelotti), Carl King (the Sagrestano) and Matthew Pierce (Sciarrone).

“We have a cast that will deliver the goods,” Moscovich said. “People will be on the edge of their seats – even though they already know how it ends.”

Fully staged in the original Napoleonic period setting, “Tosca” features lavish costumes and video-enhanced sets.

This marks West Bay Opera’s sixth production of “Tosca.” It will be sung in Italian, with English titles from a new translation Moscovich prepared specifically for this production.

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